Chapter 98: Cultivation |
“Huh? What?” Ji Jue blinked a few times, taking a moment before it clicked what she meant. Then he thumped his chest and swore, “Don’t worry, I kept my word. He might be losing an arm or a leg, but I had no choice. As long as I receive the money, I definitely won’t kill him.”
“No need to be so tense. Out there in the rift realm, if things go sideways and you really have to get ruthless, don’t hesitate. He’s just some rich kid anyway. Dead or alive, it makes no difference. I’m just reminding you that the corpse is actually pretty useful too. Don’t waste it.”
Professor Ye shook her head and sighed.
“Compared to that, though, it’s your natural talent for kidnapping, extortion, and grabbing anything and everything you can get your hands on[1] that really surprises me. As your teacher, I’m genuinely impressed. It is honestly a bit of a waste for you to be on the Ember Path.”
It wasn’t that she was upset with Ji Jue. In fact, in her earlier years, whenever she encountered similar situations, Ye Xian had been far more decisive than Ji Jue, and much more ruthless and straight to the point. If anyone foolish enough crossed her, the chances of them even leaving behind an intact corpse to be tossed into the furnace for extracting blessings were slim to none.
Besides, wasn't she the one who had instructed him to give Kong Qingyan a few hard slaps? It was just that Ji Jue’s style was genuinely strange. Every single step of his actions went beyond expectation. He went out on a trip and came back with a matrix, a blessing, and practically emptied out the entire collection of Mercury’s workshop.
What was he doing out there, archaeological exploration, or demolition work? Did he stumble into some kind of Friday sale in the rift realm and go on a shopping spree with Horsey or what?
She felt she might need some time to process this and seriously reconsider whether she had picked the wrong direction for Ji Jue. Maybe her student’s talent in arson and violence far exceeded his talent as a craftsman.
Ji Jue rubbed his hands together awkwardly, confessing a little shyly, “Also, there’s the Fluid Alchemy technique. I accidentally… learned the whole thing.”
“Fluid Alchemy. The one Mercury is best at. The classical pinnacle of alchemy, the Art of Infinite Transformation, the culmination of Purification. I learned it.” Ji Jue nodded, showing no intention of hiding anything. “Though due to my personal ability limitations, its applications are still somewhat restricted at the moment. But I’ll be compiling the core concepts, basic theories, and advanced content in the next few days.”
He casually reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of converted mercury he had been using for practice these past two days. On the table, he shaped it into a little Horsey.
A lively Horsey wriggled around, making a faint buzzing sound. That alone was proof enough, leaving no room for doubt. From the classical-era spirit circuits and constructs on it, one could clearly sense that unmistakable aura. One glance was all it took for Professor Ye to see that Ji Jue was a direct heir to Mercury’s techniques.
She took a deep breath, as if finally accepting this absurd reality, then took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Is there anything else?” Professor Ye let out a soft sigh and put her glasses back on. “Tell me everything at once. Don’t be afraid. I can handle it.”
“There might still be… quite a lot?” Ji Jue said. “I witnessed Onyx’s history from four hundred years ago, back when the Celestial Pillars collapsed. Then I got lucky and learned Fluid Alchemy. After that, I’m not sure how, but I think I blew up Mercury’s workshop. The rift realm also disappeared, and Mercury’s remains were burned into ash.
“Also, somewhere in between, I seemed to pick up a sword called… the Edge of Revolution? But later it just vanished, I don’t know where it went. Oh, and this too…” He reached into another pocket and took out a small metal bird curled into a ball, fast asleep. He gently placed it on the table.
The bird felt his touch, rubbed against his fingers with its eyes closed, then continued sleeping soundly.
Throughout that messy, all-over-the-place report, Professor Ye, who had already picked up on several key terms, hadn’t even had time to react before her attention was drawn to the bird curled into a ball on the table.
“What is that?”
“Uh… Mercury’s final work, it seems?” Ji Jue himself sounded uncertain. “Yeah… probably… more or less that…”
Considering his teacher’s cardiovascular limits, he ultimately didn’t dare mention that this thing could actually be Mercury’s beloved daughter.
But watching Professor Ye’s expression change again and again, he couldn’t help regretting not buying a couple packs of fast-acting heart medication on the way back. Should he have prefaced it a bit more? Given her some buffer time?
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the devil’s work ball, which had somehow shrunk all the way to the very bottom at some point.
“Hey, Mr. Ball, wanna add anything?”
The ball remained silent. There was no response at all, not even the slightest movement.
The ball trembled faintly, too scared to speak out loud. Are you kidding me? Please, I’m begging you, don’t say anything anymore.
It was like in a peaceful afternoon group chat, where suddenly a flood of screenshots appeared. A newbie had just started the game, did a single pull, and got several rare cards. Unsure whether they were good, they asked the veterans to take a look.
That’s enough. More than enough already. Half the veterans don’t even have pulls like that! Stop showing off! If you keep showing off like this…
Smack!
The devil’s work ball landed in Professor Ye’s hand out of nowhere. The internal log report unfolded and was automatically read. The report contained every detail from the moment Ji Jue entered the rift realm, all the way up to the first resonant strike of the Edge of Revolution.
For a long time, Ye Xian said nothing. After a long while, she sighed.
“Well, I really didn’t see this coming.”
She’d sent him off like tossing out one of those traveling frogs[2], thinking it’d be nice enough if he just mailed back a postcard. Who knew the guy would come back having basically packed up the entire site? From the stone lions at the entrance to the dogs kept inside the grounds, not a single thing was left behind.
He was practically the rift realm’s demolition king.
On top of that, the collapse of the Celestial Pillars, the remnants of an empire’s past glory, the past of the Onyxists, Mercury’s workshop, the rift realm explosion, and even the Edge of Revolution—the abundance of his harvest and the sheer explosiveness of his experiences were so extreme that even Ye Xian, after all her years of exploring various rift realms and time-ruins, had never seen anything this insane.
This was so absurd it was almost unbelievable. And yet, the fact that it was absurd to this degree somehow made it feel… strangely real.
After completely disregarding his teacher’s safety reminders, doing every imaginable and unimaginable risky thing, even daring to touch something as dangerous as the Edge of Revolution, and somehow not being burned to ashes afterwards, he had returned completely intact. He was bouncing with energy, as if nothing had happened, just to proudly show off the results of his reckless escapades.
Honestly…
She chuckled and shook her head helplessly.
“Ji Jue.” Professor Ye removed her glasses. She carefully folded the frames and placed them on the table. “You had such a bountiful harvest. Congratulations.”
“Ah, no, no, it’s all thanks to your excellent guidance, Ms. Ye!”
Ji Jue hadn’t even finished his habitual modest reply when Ye Chun, who had been pretending to be dead on the sofa, suddenly shot up like her butt was on fire.
“I… I just remembered I haven’t hung up my socks to dry! Ah, how could I forget that…”
Muttering to herself, she slipped away as fast as if she’d greased her feet and bolted. It gave Ji Jue an instinctive sense of unease.
“Speaking of guidance…”
Professor Ye, who had been gazing out the window in a daze, finally turned back. In the sunlight, her dark eyes carried a faint, rust-colored glint. Her smile was gentle.
“Come to think of it, as your teacher, aside from introducing you to modern alchemy, I actually haven’t taught you anything about spirit matter offense and defense. This is quite a lapse on my part. That’s not good. Since I happen to have time today, I’ll give you a proper lesson.”
What should you do when a child refuses to listen and keeps sticking their hands into electrical sockets? Don’t worry. A good beating usually solves it.
She believed that after a proper loving slap, any bad habits would be corrected. If one wasn’t enough, then a few more would do. As for that tiny bit of displeasure from her student’s sudden showing off earlier? That sort of trivial thing didn’t matter at all. It was nothing. She didn’t care about it in the slightest.
Still dazed, before Ji Jue could even react, everything in front of him blurred, and the chair beneath him vanished. Not just the chair, the entire living room disappeared!
In a moment of disorientation, he found himself in an unfamiliar space. The surrounding walls flipped and slid backward layer by layer. In the vast empty area, lamps lit up one after another, illuminating sections of floor that rose from the darkness and pieced themselves together. Faint arcs of electricity flickered through the air, and all the accumulated dust vanished in an instant.
The ceiling, walls, floor, everything seemed to have gained life, constantly shifting and transforming. In just a few breaths, a vast open space large enough for galloping horses had formed.
This was… underground?
Ji Jue instinctively reached down and touched the floor, only for faint sparks to leap from his fingertips.
The massive mechanism that formed this place showed no response to any kind of mechanical resonance or invocation. Instead, it even seemed slightly annoyed, shifting away a little, as if to say, “Hey kid, what are you doing? Back off a bit. Don’t get blood on me, that’s hard to clean.”
Uh. So the local system is this unfriendly?
He turned around and saw Professor Ye not too far away.
As always, she was standing with her hands behind her back. But on that usually cold and detached face, a subtle smile appeared that sent a shiver down Ji Jue’s spine. It carried three percent calmness, three percent helplessness, three percent indulgent fondness, and ninety-one percent expectation of him, as if to say, “Please don’t die too quickly.”
Over all these years, Ji Jue had only ever seen this exact “formula” of a smile when Mrs. Lu told Lu Feng to go to the kitchen and fetch the rolling pin, broom, and mop. At that point, he always knew some poor soul was about to get a beating.
So who’s that unlucky soul? Oh. It’s me. That’s fine. No, wait, that’s not fine at all!
Cold sweat was already pouring down Ji Jue’s back, while Professor Ye calmly pulled a pair of strange-looking handcuffs out of thin air. She fastened them onto her right hand, then turned the dial all the way down. Invisible restraints manifested from thin air, binding her tightly.
“Don’t worry. To ensure effectiveness of the lesson, I’ll suppress my ability and spirit matter level down to the very initial level of the Resonance Realm. Think of it as a placement test. You don’t need to hold back. Do whatever you can.”
Faced with such “good news,” Ji Jue opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn’t feel moved by her “generosity” at all. When you realize Mike Tyson is the referee, you should at least pray that the one walking onto the stage next isn’t Ultraman Taro[3]. After all, Ember techniques are purely skill- and experience-based. A veteran crushing a rookie was as easy as pie.
It was like playing the same game: some people logged in and suffered a loss immediately, some could dominate the whole server, while some could carry their teammates with ease. And then there were those who could casually hit top rank every season, but still got smacked around when they ran into actual pros. Even among the pros, the ones who fought their way to the top only earned a ticket to challenge the very best.
There was always a higher mountain beyond the first mountain[4]. For the Ember path specifically, even a single level of difference was enough to leave an opponent with an overwhelming, unbeatable sense of dread.
Since Ji Jue started out, aside from those moments when the Edge of Revolution briefly “logged in” to carry fights at max level, the highest-level match he had ever been part of was just standing on the sidelines during Wen Wen’s crushing victory over Lawrence and occasionally chiming in.
And now he was supposed to fight Professor Ye in a learning match?
Me? Are you serious?
As shock and panic surged through him, he surprisingly felt a trace of curiosity and excitement he had never experienced before. Almost as if possessed, he took a deep breath. Hesitation had left his body.
“Looking forward to learning from you[5].”
Seeing how quickly Ji Jue shed useless distractions, Professor Ye raised her brows slightly. She was just about to nod and say something, when suddenly, a gust of wind struck head-on.
Ji Jue moved forward, like a bolt of lightning. In an instant, he crossed more than ten meters and arrived right in front of her. He launched a sneak attack without any hesitation!
1. “掘地三尺” (or the more colloquial “刮地三尺”) usually describes a search that’s extremely thorough and wide-ranging, going over every possible place, even digging three chi into the ground to uncover anything hidden. It often paints the picture of someone stripping an area bare just to get resources.
A similarly exaggerated expression is “天高三尺,” often used to describe corrupt officials who exploit and squeeze people so harshly it’s as if the very sky has been scraped three feet higher.
2. This is referring to the game Travel Frog (旅かえる, Tabikaeru), which is a free-to-play mobile game developed by Hit-Point Co., Ltd. In the game, The player prepares the frog (named by the player) for its journey and sends it off on its way. The frog returns from a trip that lasts from a few hours to a few days, and brings back with it local specialties from its destination, as well as photos of its memories of the trip, which the player can view.
Have you played this game before? I used to play this when I was in uni back then! ^^ I love the chill vibes in the game.
3. This is probably referring to Kotaro Higashi, who is the human host of Ultraman Taro. He is an aspiring professional boxer.
4. “一山还有一山高” is a Chinese saying that basically means there’s always someone better out there. No matter how good you are, there’s always a higher level to reach. It highlights that skill has no ceiling and competition never really ends.
5. Here the raw writes “请多多指教”, which is a polite, humble phrase often used in professional or social settings. It literally means asking others for guidance and advice, and you’ll hear it from newcomers when they’re introducing themselves or about to learn or spar with others.
It shows respect and modesty, and carries the sense of “I’ll be relying on you,” or “sorry in advance for any trouble, and please take care of me.”
